MAutoPitch: The Free Autotune Explained, Every Control, and a Settings Chart by Job

The short answer: MAutoPitch is a free automatic tuning plugin from MeldaProduction, part of its free MFreeFXBundle, built for vocals and other monophonic sources. Set the song's key in the scale panel first, then use two knobs: Depth (how exactly notes are pulled to pitch) and Speed (how fast they get there). Both at or near 100% gives the hard, robotic tune of melodic rap and trap; lower settings tighten a vocal without the effect being obvious. Detune, Formant shift and Width turn it into a creative tool for doubles and vocal character. It corrects in real time against a key and scale. It doesn't edit notes one by one, so it can't fix one sour note without touching the rest; that's a job for an editor like Melodyne, and Auto-Tune vs Melodyne covers the split.

I tune the vocals on my own releases (50M+ streams through Sony, Universal, Ultra, Dim Mak), across both lanes: obvious hard tune and correction nobody hears. The settings below are the starting points I'd give anyone opening MAutoPitch for the first time, then you adjust by ear. Every free and paid tuner worth knowing is compared in the best autotune plugins.

What MAutoPitch actually is

• A real-time tuner. MeldaProduction describes it as a simple automatic tuning and pitch correction plugin designed for vocals and other monophonic instruments, with formant shift and stereo expansion as creative extras. It listens, detects the pitch, and moves it toward the nearest note your scale allows.
• Free. It comes in the MFreeFXBundle, Melda's free collection of effects. You can install it on its own from Melda's installer. A paid upgrade unlocks extras across the free bundle (reviews mention interface styles and resizing); the tuning itself is in the free version.
• Cross-platform. Windows and macOS, in VST, VST3, AU and AAX, so it loads in Logic (AU) and Pro Tools (AAX) as well as FL Studio, Ableton and the rest. Check Melda's system requirements page for your OS version.
• Monophonic. One note at a time: a lead vocal, a single backing part, a solo instrument. It isn't built for chords, a stack of harmonies bounced to one track, or a full mix.
• Key and scale, not MIDI or graphs. There's no note editor and no graph mode. You tell it which notes are allowed, and it does the rest automatically.

Every control, explained

Control names, ranges and defaults above come from Melda's manual and its product page; if your version's interface differs, Melda's current manual is the authority.

Depth and Speed: the two knobs that set the sound

Speed is how fast; Depth is how far. Speed decides how quickly MAutoPitch moves to the new target when the singer changes note. Depth decides how exactly it lands: at 100% every note is forced to the center of the pitch, and at lower values the singer's natural drift, slides and vibrato survive. The hard-tune sound needs both high. Natural correction needs both lower, and Depth is usually the knob that saves the vibrato.

The direction trips people up. In MAutoPitch, a higher Speed is faster. In AutoTune, a lower Retune Speed number is faster, and in Logic's Pitch Correction, a lower Response is faster. If you're moving between tuners, check which way "fast" goes before you judge the sound. The best autotune plugins has the direction for every major tuner in one table.

Set the key first

Most "bad autotune" is a wrong key, not a wrong plugin. A tuner pulls every note to the nearest allowed pitch, so a wrong scale pulls notes to wrong targets, and that warbling, glitchy sound is the plugin obeying a wrong map.

1. Find the song's key from the instrumental, not from a guess.
2. Enable only the notes in that key on the scale panel, or pick the matching basic scale.
3. Add any notes the melody uses outside the key. A blue note or a borrowed chord tone that isn't enabled gets dragged to its neighbor.
4. Use chromatic only when you can't find the key. On chromatic, every slide snaps to every semitone it passes, which is exactly the glitchy sound you're trying to avoid on hard settings.

How to tune vocals covers the key, the retune speed by genre, and when real-time tuning isn't enough.

MAutoPitch settings chart: starting points by job

These are starting points; every voice and every take sits differently, so set the scale, start from the row, then move Depth and Speed by ear on the sustained notes and the slides. The genre side of the decision is in how to tune vocals.

How to set it up

1. Comp and edit the takes first. Tuning a take you'll replace is wasted work.
2. Put MAutoPitch first in the vocal chain, before any compression, saturation, reverb or delay. A tuner wants the clean, dry voice; tuning after compression fights pumped dynamics, and reverb confuses the detector.
3. Check Base only if the song isn't tuned to A440.
4. Set the scale with the steps above.
5. Start Depth and Speed from the chart row for the job, with Keep formants at 100% and Dry/Wet at 100%.
6. Listen to the hardest parts: long held notes, slides between notes, and the quietest words. Then listen in the full mix, not just solo.
7. Compare against bypass at the same level. Tuning shouldn't change the loudness; if it seems to, you're hearing level, not pitch.
8. Build the rest of the chain after it. What a vocal chain is has the order: cleanup, compression, tone, de-essing, saturation, space.

The mistakes that make it sound cheap

• The wrong key, or chromatic with hard settings. The single biggest cause of glitchy tuning.
• The untouched default. 50% Depth and 50% Speed is audible enough to notice and too timid to be a sound. Commit to hard or to natural.
• Tuning a wet or doubled recording. Room echo, reverb, or two voices on one track give the detector more than one pitch to follow, and it jumps between them.
• Expecting it to fix one bad note. A real-time tuner treats the whole performance the same way. One flat word in an otherwise good take is a note editor's job.
• Dry/Wet below 100% on a lead. The tuned and untuned voices sit a few cents apart and smear.
• Flattening the vibrato on a ballad. If held notes sound like a synth, lower Depth before you touch Speed.

MAutoPitch vs the other options

• Graillon 3 Free Edition (Auburn Sounds): also free, with MIDI input, Snap controls that let vibrato live, and Linux support. The other free tuner worth installing.
• Your DAW's stock tuner: Logic's Pitch Correction, Ableton's Auto Shift (Live 12.1 and later), and FL Studio's Pitcher (Signature Bundle and up) do the same real-time job inside the DAW.
• AutoTune (Antares): the paid standard, and the sound the hard-tune effect is named after, with more control over natural correction.
• Melodyne: a note-by-note editor, not a real-time tuner, for invisible repair.

All of them are compared, with the speed direction for each, in the best autotune plugins.

Where I land (and the disclosure)

If your DAW ships a tuner, start there. If it doesn't (FL Studio's Fruity and Producer editions don't include Pitcher, and Pro Tools ships note editors rather than a real-time tuner), MAutoPitch is a free, light way to get both the hard-tune effect and gentle correction, with formant and width extras most free tuners don't have. Set the key, commit to a lane, and it holds up.

My own vocal chain doesn't include a tuner: tuning comes first, then the chain. The Ultimate Vocal Chain picks up after it, with level riding, compression, de-essing, the Air macro above 12 kHz, and the space on a parallel split. The product page has a loudness-matched before/after player, so you can hear it on a real vocal before you buy. I'm biased; tune with MAutoPitch or anything else, then build the chain in order.

Quick answers

Is MAutoPitch free? Yes. It's part of MeldaProduction's free MFreeFXBundle, for Windows and macOS in VST, VST3, AU and AAX. A paid upgrade adds extras across the bundle, but the tuning works in the free version.

How do you get the hard autotune effect with MAutoPitch? Set the song's key on the scale panel, then turn Depth to 100% and Speed to 90 to 100%, with Keep formants and Dry/Wet at 100%. If it warbles, a note the melody uses isn't enabled in the scale.

Is MAutoPitch as good as Auto-Tune? For the hard-tune effect and light correction, it does the job for free. AutoTune gives you more control over natural correction, vibrato and latency, and its paid editions add manual editing. Neither replaces a note editor like Melodyne for fixing single notes invisibly.

Does MAutoPitch work in FL Studio, Logic and Pro Tools? Yes. It loads as VST or VST3 in FL Studio and Ableton, as AU in Logic, and as AAX in Pro Tools, on Windows and macOS.